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Mike sat at his creaky dining table, his eyes combing the job section of the local newspaper for the 3rd time this evening as if something about it would magically change. He let out a sigh and threw the paper down onto the table.
It’s been a week since he was fired from his job at Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rental, which has added nothing but chaos to his life. His job before working at the facility wouldn’t let him take the time off to investigate the tip about his sister from his father, so he had to quit. He is currently unemployed, though it wouldn’t be the first time. He’s been looking for a new job since, but most of the ones he’s seen he’s either been to and left already, or he doesn’t have the qualifications for it. Dropping out of high school is really biting him in the ass.
In the meantime, him and his new roommate have been getting used to each other. He looks over to Ennard, who is currently sat on the floor in front of the TV, watching some random TV show. They’d been fascinated by it after they had first watched the season finale of The Immortal and The Restless (which he refused to miss despite the traumatic experience earlier that day), and he has since shown them more TV shows and some movies from his VHS collection. Honestly, them liking it so much was a godsend, because it meant they now had something in common and he could use it to keep them distracted.
This last week certainly has been… something. The stress of the job and everything he experienced caught up to him not long after he’d come home with Ennard, and it left him both physically and mentally drained. He’s been able to keep it together for the most part, at least in front of them. He doesn’t want to let his guard down too much around them until he’s sure they aren’t going to murder him. He’s fairly sure at this point they’re entirely reliant on him, but it’s better safe than sorry.
Sleeping has been very difficult; his insomnia is back and worse than ever. When he does manage to get some sleep, it’s plagued with the nightmares of new wounds and old.
It certainly didn’t help things when at one point, he awoke from a nightmare to find Ennard standing over his bed staring at him. After screaming some profanities and demanding to know what they were doing, they told him the TV remote had stopped working and they didn’t know how to change the channel without it, so they came to find him. They found him tossing and turning in his sleep and were debating on waking him. After that, they had another talk on boundaries and were told that if they need him and he’s in his room, they need to knock first. He didn’t go back to bed afterwards that night.
This isn’t all new for just Mike, however. The animatronics have spent the last week trying to get used to their new, shared body. From what he’s observed and asked about, each of them can take control of either the whole endo or individual parts as they so wish. This means that only one of them can fully pilot Ennard at a time, because if more than one does and they aren’t in sync, their movements will start fighting against one another. This has already led to arguments which, from what he’s been hearing, has usually involved Circus Baby.
He's been trying to get to know each of them personally as well. Despite being only one figure, there are 5 fully aware animatronics all piloting an endoskeleton, and all of their personalities are drastically different. Ballora gives off an air of calmness and composure, and whenever she has spoken to him, she has always been quite polite. He gets the sense that she is the more serious character of the group. Maybe too much so, as she’s called him “Michael” on a few occasions, and he doesn’t know how to feel about it.
Freddy on the other hand was the complete opposite. He was loud, excitable, and he speaks with the articulation of performer, though his voice tends to start glitching if he starts to get too excited. However, he’s already shown to be impulsive and doesn’t have much of a filter, and he gets frustrated if he’s denied something he’s set his mind on. Thankfully, Bon-Bon’s role as a deterrent seems to have consisted with the move, as he will always pipe up and calm Freddy down if he starts going too far. Mike hopes that if there’s ever a time Bon-Bon can’t reel Freddy in, the others will be able to stop him from doing something rash.
Foxy is… well. He can’t say much about Foxy. He’s only spoken once or twice since coming here, and that’s only what Mike has heard. Whenever Foxy speaks, his voice is incredibly quiet, barely above a whisper. Mike is running on the assumption that Foxy is shy, so he’ll wait until Ennard is more comfortable before trying to push things.
And then there was Circus Baby. Mike really struggles to get a read on her. She’s the only one of the animatronics who he really got to know before they left the facility, and her attitude has proved to be sporadic. One moment, she’s how she was when he met her. She’s soft spoken and incredibly curious, asking him all sorts of questions. She already seems to be noticeably happier. However, there’s time where her other side slips through the cracks, when she’s bickering with the other animatronics, or she makes a comment that feels much too cold. It’s much more reminiscent of how she was after she kidnapped him.
He can’t say he blames her for her behaviour, he’s seen the conditions they lived in down there, even if only briefly. Plus, he can deal with the occasional cold comment, it wouldn’t be a first. But if it’s going to start causing arguments internally, then it’s going to become a problem in the long term.
He has to wonder if she’s always been like this, or if what she’s been through has changed her. “Manipulative” would be a weird trait to program into a kids animatronic. His mind wanders back to what she told him when he visited her when he was told not to. He remembers the wonder in her voice when she described her time on the stage, as well as her genuine confusion and hurt over what followed. The new context behind that story makes his stomach twist.
It's evident that his father designed them that way. But why? What does he gain by killing children? And why Elizabeth? His father always adored her, ever since she was born. It seems the animatronics don’t know of these features, or at least Baby didn’t know until it happened. Were all of them equipped with something similar? Have they killed more than just Elizabeth?
And speaking of Elizabeth, what even happened that last night? Was that actually her, or was Circus Baby just elaborately fucking with him? Is her ghost haunting Baby or something? That shouldn’t even be possible, but it sounded exactly like her…
While he was lost in thought, the TV show Ennard was watching rolls into the commercials. They lean back from the TV, now less focused, and the eye belonging to Foxy did a sweep of the room and locked eyes with Mike, who zoned out staring at them. Mike snaps back to reality and, a few moments later, Ennard’s head turns to look at him.
‘Why are you staring?’ asks Baby curiously.
Mike blinks, getting his thoughts back in order, before responding, ‘Just thinking about some things. Hey listen, can I ask you guys some questions? While the commercials are on?’
Ennard’s head tilts. ‘What kind of questions?’
Mike thinks for a moment, trying to think of the best way to approach it. ‘What happened last week has left me with a lot of questions, both about you guys and the facility. I was hoping I could ask you some things to help me make sense of it.’
He watches as Ennard’s expression morphs into the closest equivalent of worry, so he quickly adds, ‘You don’t have to if you don’t want to! Some of it is just… personal to me, and I’m not going to get any answers from anywhere else.’
Baby’s voice goes quiet, and Mike can hear their quiet, inaudible whispering. Mike waits, nervously picking at the skin around one of his nails.
‘Okay,’ Baby’s voice finally responds, ‘if it goes too far, we will tell you.’
Mike nods and stands, grabbing his dining chair and bringing it closer. He scoops up the remote and turns the TV down, and Ennard moves to face him fully.
‘Back when Circus Baby's Pizza World was set to open, how long were all of you on stage for? Baby said she was only on stage once,’ Mike starts.
‘That was the same for the rest of us,’ Ballora answers this time. ‘From what I heard from the staff, it was supposed to be a trial run before the grand opening. I had thought it had gone perfectly, but when we were next activated, we had been moved somewhere new. Down there. We were never told why.’
‘Yeah, they cancelled everything not long before they were meant to open. The papers said the staff were really confused about it. Baby, did you ever tell the others what happened?’
‘No,’ Circus Baby responds sadly, ‘I didn’t understand what had happened, and they never properly repaired me, not after I was scooped. I don’t think they wanted to. I stayed with my “stage” for most of my time there.’
‘Can you tell the others what happened? Please? I wonna know if any of you experienced anything similar, or at least anything out of the ordinary on that day,’ Mike asks.
She’s quiet for a few moments, long enough to make Mike nervous and start to apologise, but then she speaks up. She recalls everything again in a far-off voice. It’s not as long winded as her first story was, but the confusion and hurt in her voice was still there.
‘Wait, wait, wait!’ interrupts Freddy’s voice suddenly, making Mike jump in his seat, ‘Th-This was the same thing that happened to me!’
‘Wait, what? It did?’ asks Mike, shocked.
‘Yeah! We were on my stage, just m-me and Bon-Bon entertaining all of our friends! I don’t know why, but I always knew how many ki-kids were in the room, no matter where they were! Bon-Bon and I were singing songs and making jokes, the usual stuff! Until only one kid was left in the room, a little b-boy. That’s when I stopped and crouched down to his level, holding out B-Bon-Bon and beckoning him to get closer. I couldn’t mo-move on my own, something was contro-olling me! Then, when he got close… SNAP!’ Freddy yells, glee in his voice, ‘My stomach sprang open and i-in he came! And I’ve felt the same way since!’
Freddy’s gleeful tone makes Mike’s stomach twist horribly, and he continued to pick at his skin. ‘Uh… Felt what way?’
‘Like I-I wonna do it again! Like I wonna squeeeeeeze the li-life out of someone. Kid, adult, whatever! I didn’t f-feel this way before that d-day, but now…’ and he lets out a hysteric cackle littered with glitching audio.
At this moment, Bon-Bon decides to pipe up. ‘Now Freddy, that’s not how we’re meant to treat our friends! If our friends are dead, that means we can’t play with them! Now calm down, your glitching is getting worse.’
Freddy’s cackling gradually died down to giggling before he eventually fell quiet. Mike was sat tense in his seat in the whole time.
‘Right… well… Baby, do you uh, do you feel the same way?’ Mike asks hesitantly.
‘No,’ she says harshly before returning to her usual tone. ‘I do remember feeling that way though, when it happened, but the feeling went away afterwards. I told you, I wasn’t myself.’
‘Yeah, but I thought it meant, like, “something is controlling me” not “I am overcome with insatiable bloodlust”, yknow?’ Mike says sarcastically. ‘Anyway, the fact that you felt the same means there’s a pattern. Did the rest of you have anything like this happen?’
‘Like I said, I had thought the day had been perfect. Nothing remotely close to that happened to me,’ Ballora says first.
To Mike’s surprise, Foxy’s quiet voice speaks next. ‘Nothing like that for me either…’
Bon-Bon’s chirpy voice pipes up last. ‘I obviously felt it too, but I snapped out of it afterwards! Unlike the big guy. That’s when the voice glitches started though.’
Mike leans back in his chair, staring up at a crack in his ceiling while he runs a hand through his long brown hair. ‘It just doesn’t make sense. It’s obvious that what you did was intentional, why else would you have been built with these features? So why shut down if you did exactly what you were meant to? Word never got out publicly that children had gone missing. It must be because of her…’ At this point, Mike was just thinking aloud, but then Baby responds.
‘You said she was your sister.’ It wasn’t a question.
His body sags slightly, and he messes with a knot in his hair. ‘Yeah… I went down there to go find her. I thought you knew that already?’ He looks back at Ennard, who is staring at him.
‘She only told me to say that, she was as desperate to get out as we were. She had never properly talked to me before, not until you arrived.’ Then, Ennard breaks eye contact and looks at the floor. ‘I’m sorry.’
Mike shrugs, looking at the TV instead. ‘I figured it out pretty quickly when I worked there, but I kept coming back because I had to be sure. At this point, I think the only reason he told me to go find her was because he wanted me to die.’
‘Who is he?’ Baby asks curiously, and Mike flinches slightly. Him and his big mouth, he doesn’t know how they’re going to react to this. He can’t exactly lie about this though; they’ll find out eventually. He turns back towards them.
‘Yeah uh, about that… I want it known before I say this that we are not on good terms. At all.’ He chickens out a bit, rubbing the back of his neck and looking back at the TV. ‘Our dad was the one who told me she was down there. He’s the owner of the company. He made you guys.’
He looks back at them. They’ve leaned towards him, head locked in a cocked position that’s mirroring Baby’s earlier curiosity. They’re silent for a few moments, before there’s a sudden explosion of noise as some of them try to speak at once.
Well, he says speak. Freddy is laughing. He can hear Ballora and Baby both trying to speak, and Ennard’s body spasms as it jumps between different actions, most likely being wretched back and forth for control.
‘Guys, GUYS! Jesus Christ, one at a time! Please!’ Mike yells, jumping in his seat at the sudden onslaught of noise. Ballora’s voice breaks through.
‘You’re telling us that the one who locked us away in that metal prison and tortured us endlessly for no reason is your father?’ Ballora’s voice hisses. She’s not yelling, but her voice is colder and has an edge to it that makes Mike sweat. The impact is softened slightly however, as Freddy’s giggling fills the background.
‘Yes he is, but like I just said, we’re not on good terms. When he told me to go down there and find my sister, that was the first time I’ve spoken from him in, like, 2 years! I don’t like him, I haven’t in a long time, and finding out all this stuff has just made me hate him more,’ Mike explains hastily.
‘Why didn’t this come up before?’ Baby butts in, voice also taking a colder edge.
‘Oh yeah, I’m sure that conversation would’ve gone great last week. “Hey guy, I know you’re still probably debating on whether or not you’re going to kill me and use me as a meat puppet, but my dad made you and was the one who put you down there! What a coincidence!”.’
‘Who said we don’t still want to ki-kill you?’ Freddy chimes in gleefully, still giggling. Mike leans away from them slightly in his seat. There’s a sound of irritation from somewhere else in Ennard, though the source of who is unknown.
‘We’re not going to kill him,’ Ballora says, irritated, ‘we would have nowhere else to go. And why are you laughing?’ she snaps.
‘Becaaaause, if we were all m-made by the same guy, that would make Mikey our li-little brother!’
‘Wait, hang on, why would I be the little brother here? I’m older than all of you,’ Mike asks, cracking a slight smile at the absurd change in tone.
‘’Cause we’re bigger than you! Duh!’ and he lets out another glitchy cackle, with Ennard leaning back, shaking and slapping their leg as if they just told a great joke. ‘Li-little M-Mikey!’
Mike rolls his eyes and hops off his chair, crouching down so he’s more on their level. ‘Look, guys. If I was in league with him, I wouldn’t have brought you back with me. Why would I have needed to? I could see the kind of shithole he kept you in-’ a few calls of ‘language!’ came from the animatronic, which he ignores, ‘-and how he treated you, and I felt bad! My life was in a rough place before I brought you guys home, and I’ve taken a big risk breaking you guys out. I’m still half expecting the police to break my door down and accuse me stealing. I wouldn’t have done this if I didn’t want to help you.’
They all fell into silence, even Freddy’s laughing has stopped. Several minutes pass and Mike starts to feel nervous, so he turns to the TV, getting comfortable on the floor. Ennard does the same a few moments later, and they sit in silence for a while.
It isn’t until a full episode has passed that Mike speaks again. ‘Hey Circus Baby?’ he asks suddenly.
‘Yes?’ she says, turning to look at him.
‘You said she talks to you? Elizabeth?’
‘She did… she hasn’t spoken since that night though.’
‘Could… could I talk to her?’
Ennard looks at him for a few moments before their eye drifts away and they cock their head, as if they’re thinking. They stay like that for a couple minutes, long enough to start to worry Mike, before Ennard’s body suddenly starts to fall to the side, as if they’ve just been shut down suddenly. They catch themselves and look down, checking themselves over.
‘What-‘ Ballora starts, but she stops when she sees what’s happening.
A small figure has started to manifest between Ennard and Mike. It starts as a lump of dark shadow, like a void in the middle of the lit room, that gradually starts to take shape. As it did, the darkness lightens into a mid-grey tone and features begin to become clearer. Buckled up Mary Janes and pulled up socks, a neat blouse tucked into a frilly skirt, curly hair that is partially tied up with a neat bow. Mike’s heart leaps into his throat.
Standing in front of him is the spitting image of his younger sister, Elizabeth Afton. She’s not exactly how he remembers her, before she went missing he hadn’t seen her in about 2 years, but it’s not only that which is different. She is completely grey, as if someone sucked out all her colour, and she has dark marks vertically across her cheeks, like tears of black sludge. Her eyes are a piercing black with bright white iris’.
Mike sits there in a stunned silence, slack jawed and staring. She doesn’t move, save for occasionally blinking. She doesn’t breathe.
Eventually, he pushes out the lump in his throat. ‘Liz?’ he asks shakily, full of disbelief.
Her face cracks into a warm smile. ‘Hi Mike,’ she says.
Mike quickly shifts from sitting to kneeling, and he reaches out for her. He stops though, not wanting to just grab her. She still smiles and closes the gap, taking his hand and then beckoning for his other one. She’s ice cold to the touch, but she’s there. He squeezes her hands lightly.
‘How is this even possible…?’ he says with wonder.
‘I don’t know,’ she says, looking down at their hands. Her voice has a slight, eerie echo to it. ‘I meant it when I said I didn’t really die. I’ve never done… this, though. I never tried.’
‘Liz, I need to ask, and if you don’t want to talk about it then I won’t press it, but what happened?’
Her brows furrow, and she squeezes his hands. Then, she lets go and steps back, and starts to fiddle with the hem of her skirt.
‘When Daddy showed her to me, all I wanted was to go and see her. To play with her. She was so pretty, and she sparkled under the lights. Daddy said he made her when thinking of me, but he never let me go near her!’ She clenches the fabric hard, and then let go, choosing to play with her hair instead.
‘That day, Daddy was very busy with grown up stuff. A lot of people wanted to talk to him, to get him to look at things. So, when he wasn’t looking, I snuck away! All I wanted was to be near her, to hear her sing, watch her dance. All the other kids got to and it wasn’t fair! I finally got to see her, and she was all alone. I had her all to myself! Then, she stopped, her stomach opened, and there was an ice cream cone. I moved over to grab it… and…’ she trails off, her expression becoming sorrowful. She grips her curls and the edges of her form begin to blur, so Mike steps in.
‘It’s alright, you can stop there. I know what happened after that,’ he says as he gently grabs her shoulders. Her grip relaxes and her arms drop, and her form solidifies again. She looks back up at Mike.
‘I know it was an accident! I should’ve listened to Daddy, I just got caught in the machine. It was silly of me.’
‘Liz… what happened was intentional. Dad made Circus Baby to do that. If it didn’t happen to you, a different kid would’ve been caught in the trap. Heck, another kid was, in a different animatronic!’
‘No. No! Daddy would never do that! He loves me, and he’s a good person. He wouldn’t hurt someone, hurt me!’
‘Liz… no one else could’ve done it. The only one who made them was Dad. He may not have wanted to get you with it, but it’s still his fault. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to upset you with this, but Dad is not a good person. Even if this was somehow an accident, you saw how he treated the robots in the facility. He owns that place, it’s not like he wouldn’t have known.’
‘No! He couldn’t have done this! I don’t believe it! Daddy loves me!’ but despite her defiant tone, Mike could see the pained expression on her face. She knows it’s true.
It may have been a mistake forcing her to confront it though, as she begins to cry black tears. While this is bad enough on its own, her shift in emotions has an immediate effect on the room. Suddenly, all of the electronics start going haywire. The image on the TV starts to flicker and glitch, the lamps start to bloom and dim rapidly and even Ennard, who at this point had been sat watching quietly, starts to spasm and twitch. She herself begins to flicker, her form becoming blurred around the edges and phasing in and out of view.
Mike starts to panic. Not only has he made his ghost sister cry, but this could be hurting Ennard, or even affecting other apartments. So, he does the first thing he can think to do.
He leans forward and scoops her up into a hug, leaning back to bring her onto his lap. Despite her flickering form, he can still feel her. He feels her tense up at first, but it’s not long before she gives in, crying into his chest.
They stay like that for a while, Elizabeth letting everything out. She’s ice cold all over like her hands were, but Mike doesn’t care. He strokes her hair gently, whispering reassurances and giving her the time she needs. The electronics in the room are still affected, but it’s less violent now, and Mike silently hopes it’s only his apartment that’s affected.
Eventually, her sobs become whimpers, which soon stop entirely. She clings to Mike for a few more moments before pulling back, rubbing her eyes and looking down at her skirt.
‘…You alright?’ Mike asks quietly, testing the waters. She lets out a wet huff, shaking her head slightly.
‘No. I haven’t been for a while. I felt it, y’know. Everything they did to her, I felt it too. The scooping, the shocks…’ She shudders, and Mike’s grip on her tightens slightly.
‘I was so desperate to get out of there. We all were. When she thought up the idea of using you, I was sure it was the only way. I almost got you turned into this.’ She lazily gestures at herself, and then her head thumps back down against his chest. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whimpers.
He shushes her and hugs her again. ‘It’s alright. It didn’t happen and we’re all better for it, I think so anyway.’
They stay like that for a for a few minutes before he feels her shudder, and suddenly her form shimmers, becoming immediately less solid. She shifts in his arms. ‘I’m tired. I need to go now.’ She looks back up at him with tired eyes, but a small genuine smile on her lips. ‘Goodbye Mike.’
And then he watches as she fades completely, the cold, the weight, gone before he can react. He stares down at his now empty lap, the wetness on his shirt cold against his chest.
‘…bye Liz.’
Mike’s arms finally drop to his sides as he stares, his mind still processing what just happened. However, he’s snapped out of it when he hears the sound of shifting metal in front of him, and he looks over at Ennard.
The electronics in the room have long since calmed down, but Ennard sits with a metal hand covering the only working eye in the socket. He can hear sounds of something internal adjusting.
‘You guys alright?’ he asks. His voice comes out weaker than he expected.
‘Most of us are. Circus Baby is still adjusting. She disappeared for all of that,’ Ballora says.
‘The stuff with the electronics didn’t… hurt you guys, did it?’
‘No. It was… disorienting, but not “painful”. The feeling is similar to how the shocks were, but not nearly as severe.’
‘Wouldn’t know! We NEVER got shocked!’ Freddy booms cheerily. Before Ballora can scold him though, Ennard removes the hand from their face, sitting up straighter.
‘That was… very strange,’ Baby says softly.
‘You okay?’ Mike asks. Ennard nods.
‘I’m not fully sure what happened. It seems that her manifesting shut me down physically. I was still here, I could see and hear what was happening, but I was also very far away… I couldn’t control myself.’ Her voice goes noticeably darker at that last statement, but she continues as normal. ‘She’s sleeping now. She might be for some time, nothing like this has happened before.’
Mike nods, and then they both sit there in silence, unsure on what to say next. Surprisingly, for the second time today, it’s Foxy who speaks, and he becomes the saving grace.
‘…The show’s back on,’ he mumbles, and they all look at the TV as the opening sequence begins to play out. Ennard turns back at Mike, who gestures back towards the TV.
‘You guys have done plenty for me, I won’t ask anything else of you. Feel free.’ Ennard watches Mike for a few moments with their unblinking stare, before they readjust to face the TV again, taking up the same position they had earlier.
Mike has to use the chair behind him to help him stand as his legs are too shaky to support him. He twists the chair around and sits down, resting his arms on top of the back of the chair and his head in his arms as he watches along absent mindedly.
He doesn’t absorb any of it though. His head is swimming as everything that just happened catches up to him, all of the new information weighing on his shoulders like a ton of bricks. He hopes Ennard is distracted enough that they don’t see his tears as he remembers Elizabeth’s face.